Vinko Globokar is
one of those composers whose breadth
of background almost guarantees a
certain amount of unpredictability.
Starting out as a jazz musician, he
is also a top trombone player, having
premiered works for that instrument
by the likes of Berio, Kagel, Stockhausen
and Takemitsu. He was part of the
free improvisation movement in the
late 1960s, but as a conductor and
thinker on music and creativity in
general his practical sense as a musician
always gives his work a firm foundation
in functional reality – even if creating
pieces which connect ensembles remotely
via radio link, or as in this case,
multiple orchestras in a way which
to some extent recalls Stockhausen’s
Gruppen.

Der Engel der
Geschichte, or ‘The Angel of History’,
is a trilogy for two orchestras and
a diversity of electronics. The pre-recorded
voices which are en element in the
opening of the work stand as a symbol
for the composer’s intention to "create
a sound fresco of the time I am living
in." These are early recordings
of folk music from former Yugoslavia’s
various regions, names which in our
time have become notorious labels
on mankind’s baggage of guilt, his
inhumanity to his neighbour – Bosnia,
Serbia, Kosovo … Globokar worked as
a jazz trombonist in the region for
many years in the late 1940s and early
1950s, so his associations with these
countries and his affection for the
people must be strong, although this
isn’t mentioned in the booklet for
this release. The strange thing which
happens is that these voices and their
‘strange’ music, placed in this new
context, can sound every bit as modern
and challenging to my ears as Globokar’s
own composition. Later, recordings
of dance bands are also inserted;
appearing as a briefly opened window
into more peaceful, joyous times –
a challenging contrast with the dark
world from which they emerge.

Globokar was already
working on this first movement, ‘Zerfall’,
when his attention was brought to
a painting by Paul Klee called Angelus
Novus, and the German philosopher
Walter Benjamin’s writings in relation
to it. The quotations included in
the booklet are concise, but go a
long way towards explaining Globokar’s
motivations and what he is expressing:
"This is how the angel of history
must look. His face is turned towards
the past. Where a chain of events
appear before us, he
sees a single catastrophe, which keeps
piling wreckage upon wreckage and
hurls it at his feet." At the
end of this movement, the singing
voices are drowned out by the rolling
machinery of massed tanks – a very
disturbing aural image.

Der Engel der
Geschichte deals with this difficult
subject head on, taking as the second
movement ‘Mars’ the subject, possibly,
of a "police state ending in
anarchy". In this movement the
sound of one of the orchestras is
manipulated in a ‘live electronic
alienation’. This is a strange effect,
in which at times the orchestra seems
to grow extra sonic limbs or to leech
into different areas of the soundscape
like flourishing bacteria. Echoes
and repetitions extend into the dry
interruptions of other instruments,
and the music develops like a diseased
musette under a surface of violent
struggle. The shock of distorted perspectives
and sounds placed surreally out of
context, often with their timbre and
emphasis completely malformed, is
quite a remarkable effect in SACD
mode. Multi-channel recording and
reproduction is very good for this
kind of music. Close your eyes, and
the idea that you are sitting in the
hall surrounded by bizarre strangeness
is entirely convincing.

The doom-laden themes
and generally heavily symbolic nature
of the music in this piece are not
allowed to destroy our faith in humanity
entirely, and the final movement ‘Hoffnung’
introduces "the terrible storm
of progress, of hope." Globokar
sees this as the present, with positive
aspects superimposed upon the negative.
Connoisseurs of his musical language
will be ready for the glimpses of
humour which peep around the corner
here – a dancing accordion, some jazzy
winds, slides in the brass – not always
messengers of fragrance and nice things,
but the mood is briefly, very briefly
lightened on occasion. Tension rises
toward the end, with the development
of some cluster chords which heighten
a sense of cinematic drama which is
undercurrent of the entire movement.
This is all very strong stuff, which
leaves the listener in no doubt as
to the weight of the composer’s message.

Les Otages,
‘The Hostages’, is a ‘musical fiction’
inspired by a newspaper article about
hostages. Globokar says no more to
illustrate the work, but requested
a poem by his friend the writer Edoardo
Sanguineti. This is reproduced and
translated in the booklet and, casting
a grim message of decay and terrors,
doesn’t really promise an easy ride.
The music opens with a distinct menu
of animal sounds, concluding with
the laughter of a young child, and
religious chanting. Sardonic juxtapositions?
Echoes of the natural world and a
lost freedom? Our own imaginations
and sense of moral perspective are
awakened from the start in this remarkable
piece, and thus poked into some kind
of literal response the mind enquires
and seeks clues. As with a real hostage
situation, the emotions and senses
are dislocated and disorientated.
Instruments are made to generate atmospheric
environments – night? or searing heat?
Natural sounds are a feature. Knocking
wood – is it footsteps? or amplified
raindrops? As with Der Engel der
Geschichte the music is almost
pure drama, but here the references
are more overt, if almost always open
to more than one interpretation. A
tapping typewriter is the clearest
of clues – but is it? It’s not a real
typewriter ... The banalities of human
existence – telephones and snoring,
are set against the in-your-face angst
of the unknown. Fans of horror films
should play this to themselves: just
them, the music and their imagination
in a darkened room. I can guarantee
a more memorable experience than just
about anything the slimy monster department
can come up with.

I have to be honest,
this is by no means an easy brace
of works. Fans of Globokar will know
a little of what to expect, and many
of his stylistic fingerprints pop
up from time to time. There are the
‘telegraph wire’ sustained strings,
shouts – sometimes through megaphones,
siren wailing from certain instruments,
a general sense of high impact avant-garde
expressionism and no sense of compromise.
Extremes of range are a feature of
the orchestration, from low tuba to
piccolo and whistles. There are stretches
of almost silence and interruptions
of violent power. Globokar’s musical
language is almost entirely dramatic
in these pieces. There is no room
for lyricism or tonality in the conventional
sense, but the imagination is taken
to places more normally reserved for
gritty and well-written fiction in
book form. Der Engel der Geschichte
is a work on a fearsomely grand
and ambitious scale, but doesn’t exist
in isolation in Globokar’s oeuvre.
It is possible to see it as an extension
of the kinds of ideas explored in
Les Emigrés from 1982,
which anticipates the troubles in
former Yugoslavia with its examination
of fears and motives in movement within
the European population.

Contemporary music
needs its commentators on seriously
challenging and socially relevant
themes, so in this aspect alone this
is a release I would urge anyone to
explore. It almost goes without saying
that the performances are excellent
– high in energy, and fully in tune
with the composer’s idiom. Recorded
sound is also very good, and at times
startling in terms of its imaging.
You could buy it for mother-in-law,
but you’d better make sure in advance
that it’s on her wish-list.

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